The Lake Erie Region Conservancy wants local leaders and the public to know that the city park where they walk their dog and the land along a creek where people come to fish for steelhead are more than pretty places to have fun.

The conservancy, along with the VanAmburg Group, recently completed a yearlong study of properties including public parks and trails, privately owned wetlands, preserved working farmland, and private land trust owned and eased lands. The study found that such open space properties help support local jobs, create tourism and tax revenue, and reduce health-care costs, among other benefits.

"It shows the economic value of open space," conservancy President Tom Fuhrman said.

A public presentation on the study will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Jefferson Educational Society, 3207 State St. Fuhrman said the results also will be shared with community leaders. Conservancy officials hope the study will help private and public sector leaders make better decisions and also will lead to a bond issue or ballot referendum in 2014 to set aside Erie County money for future protection of open space.

The study was funded by the conservancy and the Erie Community Foundation, Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority and Mercyhurst University.

The effort identified 629 protected open space properties in Erie County totaling about 65,000 acres or 12.64 percent of the total land, according to the 67-page study report titled "The Economic Value of Protected Open Space in Erie County, Pennsylvania." The majority of those acres, a little more than 30,000, are made up of public parks and trails owned by the state or municipalities.

Fuhrman said Presque Isle State Park, the 3,200-acre peninsula into Lake Erie, is the most obvious example of protected open space in the county.

Others he named include Erie Bluffs State Park in western Erie County, Six Mile Creek Park in eastern Erie County and land along Elk Creek that allows public access to the steelhead stream.

The study found that protected open space has more than $672 million in annual economic value.

That includes about $254 million in annual benefit for residents who recreate on protected open space, more than $149 million in costs avoided as a result of natural provision of environmental services and nearly $15 million in annual property and transfer tax revenue for local governments, according to the study.

Free or low-cost recreational activities are provided at some protected open space properties, according to the study. That allows people to be physically active, which can reduce health-care costs, according to the study and Fuhrman.

Protected open space, especially state parks and fishing sites, draws visitors who spend money on hotel rooms and similar amenities, the study and Fuhrman said.

He said that if the wetlands didn't exist, money would have to be spent to artificially replicate the cleansing of air and water that naturally occurs there.

Fuhrman also said that a lot of open space properties are tax-exempt, but they also improve the value of nearby properties on which taxes are paid.

"The closer you are to a protected open space, the more valuable your land is and the more tax revenue that generates," he said.

He cited Erie's Frontier Park area as an example.

The study also found more than 2,050 jobs created on or as a result of protected open space in Erie County.

Fuhrman said some are summer or seasonal jobs related to tourism but others provide year-round employment.

He said copies of the study are available by calling the conservancy at 566-9319.